The Sulu Zone: Commerce and the evolution of a multi-ethnic polity, 1768-1898

Warren, J.F.ORCID: 0000-0003-0055-6730 (1979) The Sulu Zone: Commerce and the evolution of a multi-ethnic polity, 1768-1898. Archipel, 18 . pp. 223-230.

Abstract

"It seems to me inaccurate to dispose of such Indonesian States as Palembang, Siak, Achin, or Johore with the qualifications corrupt despotisms, pirate states, and slave states, hotbeds of political danger and decay. Inaccurate, if for no other reason, because despotism, piracy and slavery are historical terms, and history is not written with value judgements. To choose examples from the field of Dutch history, the town of Flushing based its existence in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in no small measure on privateering and smuggling, and Middleburg's renowned trading company of 1720 occupied itself with privateering, smuggling to and from Spanish America and slave trade ... The chief point is something else; what was the power — political-maritime-economic — of the harbour principalities."

J.C. Van Leur

Item Type:	Journal Article
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Social Inquiry
Publisher:	Association Archipel
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/18179

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